Hit Parade (Page 28)

Suppose the dog was innocent? Suppose there was a larger picture here? Suppose, say, Evelyn Augenblick had found out that her husband had been dillydallying with Aida Cuppering. Suppose the high-powered attorney liked to lick Cuppering’s boots, suppose he let her lead him around on a leash, muzzled or not. And suppose Evelyn’s way of getting even was to…

To spend ten thousand dollars having the woman’s dog killed?

Keller shook his head. This was something that needed more thought.

“Excuse me,” the woman said. “Is this seat taken?”

Keller had read all he wanted to read in the New York Times, and now he was taking a shot at the crossword puzzle. It was a Thursday, so that made it a fairly difficult puzzle, though nowhere near as hard as the Saturday one would be. For some reason-Keller didn’t know what it might be-the Times puzzle started out each Monday at a grade-school level, and by Saturday became damn near impossible to finish.

Keller looked up, abandoning the search for a seven-letter word for “Diana’s nemesis,” to see a slender woman in her late thirties, wearing faded jeans and a Leggs Mini-Marathon T-shirt. Beyond her, he noted a pair of unoccupied benches, and a glance to either side indicated similarly empty benches on either side of him.

“No,” he said, carefully. “No, make yourself comfortable.”

She sat down to his right, and he waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t he returned to his crossword puzzle. Diana’s nemesis. Which Diana? he wondered. The English princess? The Roman goddess of the hunt?

The woman cleared her throat, and Keller figured the puzzle was a lost cause. He kept his eyes on it, but his attention was on his companion, and he waited for her to say something. What she said, hesitantly, was that she didn’t know where to begin.

“Anywhere,” Keller suggested.

“All right. My name is Myra Tannen. I followed you from Evelyn’s.”

“You followed me…”

“From Evelyn’s. The other day. I wanted to come along to the airport, but Evelyn insisted on going alone. I’m paying half the fee, I ought to have as much right to meet you as she has, but, well, that’s Evelyn for you.”

Well, Dot had said there were two women, and this one, Myra, was evidently the owner of the twelve-year-old Yorkie of whom Fluffy had made short work. It wasn’t bad enough that he’d met one of his employers, but now he’d met the other. And she’d followed him from Evelyn’s-followed him!-and this morning she’d come to the park and found him.

“When you followed me…”

“I live on the same block as Evelyn,” she said. “Just two doors down, actually. I saw the two of you get out of the taxi, and I was watching when you left. And I, well, followed you.”

“I see.”

“I got a nice long walk out of it. I don’t walk that much now that I don’t have a dog to walk. But you know about that.”

“Yes.”

“She was the sweetest thing, my little dog. Well, never mind about that. I followed you all the way through the park and down to First Avenue and wherever it was. Forty-ninth Street? You went into a building there, and I was going to wait for you, and then I told myself I was being silly. So I got in a cab and came home.”

For God’s sake, he thought. This amateur, this little housewife, had followed him home. She knew where he lived.

He hesitated, looking for the right words. Would it be enough to tell her that this was no way to proceed, that contact with his clients compromised his mission? Was it in fact time to abort the whole business? If they had to give back the money, well, that was one good thing about working for chump change: a refund wasn’t all that expensive.

He said, “Look, what you have to understand-”

“Not now. There she is.”

And there she was, all right. Aida Cuppering, dressed rather like a Doberman pinscher, all black leather and metal studs and high black lace-up boots, striding along imperiously with Fluffy, leashed, stepping along at her side. As she drew abreast of Keller and his companion, the woman stopped long enough to unclip the dog’s lead from his collar. She straightened up, and for a moment her gaze swept the bench where Keller and Myra Tannen sat, dismissing them even as she took note of them. Then she walked on, and Fluffy walked along at heel, both of them looking perfectly lethal.

“She’s not supposed to do that,” Myra said. “In the first place he’s supposed to be muzzled, and every dog’s supposed to be kept on a leash.”

“Well,” Keller said.

“She wants him to kill other dogs. I saw her face when my Millicent was killed. It was quick, you know. He picked her up in his jaws and shook her and snapped her spine.”

“Oh.”

“And I saw her face. That’s not where I was looking, I was watching what was happening, I was trying to do something, but my eyes went to her face, and she was…excited.”

“Oh.”

“That dog’s a danger. Something has to be done about it. Are you going to-”

“Yes,” he said, “but, you know, I can’t have an audience when it happens. I’m not used to working under supervision.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, “and believe me, I won’t do anything like this again. I won’t approach you or follow you, nothing like that.”

“Good.”

“But, you see, I want to…well, amend the agreement.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Besides the dog.”

“Oh?”

“Of course I want you to take care of the dog, but there’s something else I’d like to have you do, and I’m prepared to pay extra for it. I mean, considerably extra.”

The owner too, he thought. Well, that was appropriate, wasn’t it? The dog couldn’t help its behavior, while the owner actively encouraged it.

She was carrying a tote bag bearing the logo of a bank, and she started to draw a large brown envelope from it, then changed her mind. “Take the whole thing,” she said, handing him the tote bag. “There’s nothing else in it, just the money, and it’ll be easier to carry this way. Here, take it.”

Not at all the professional way to do things, he thought. But he took the tote bag.

“This is irregular,” he said carefully. “I’ll have to talk to my people in Chicago, and-”

“Why?”

He looked at her.

“They don’t have to know about this,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “This is just between you and me. It’s all cash, and it’s a lot more than the two of us gave you for the dog, and if you don’t say anything about it to your people, well, you won’t have to split with them, will you?”

He wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“I want you to kill her,” she said, and there was no lack of conviction in her tone. “You can make it look like an accident, or like a mugging gone wrong, or, I don’t know, a sex crime? Anything you want, it doesn’t matter, just as long as she dies. And if it’s painful, well, that’s fine with me.”

Was she wearing a wire? Were there plainclothes cops stationed behind the trees? And wouldn’t that be a cute way to entrap a hit man. Bring him in to kill a dog, then raise the stakes, and-

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’re paying me this money yourself, and it’s in cash, and nobody else is going to know about it.”

“That’s right.”

“And in return you want me to take care of Aida Cuppering.”

She stared at him. “Aida Cuppering? What do I care about Aida Cuppering?”

“I thought-”

“I don’t care about her,” Myra Tannen said. “I don’t even care about her damn dog, not really. What I want you to do is kill Evelyn.”

29

“What a mess,” Dot said.

“No kidding.”

“All I can say is I’m sorry I got you into this. Two women hired you to put a dog down, and you’ve met each of them face-to-face, and one of them knows where you live.”

“She doesn’t know that I live there,” he said. “She thinks I flew in from Chicago. But she knows the address, and probably thinks I’m staying there for the time being.”

“You never noticed you were being followed?”

“It never occurred to me to check. I walk home all the time, Dot. I never feel the need to look over my shoulder.”

“And you’d never have to, if I’d borne in mind the old rule about not crapping where we eat. You know what it was, Keller? There were two reasons to turn the job down, because it was in New York and because it was a dog, and what I did, I let the two of them cancel each other out. My apologies. Still, a question arises.”

“Oh?”

“How much was in the bag?”

“Twenty-five.”

“I hope that’s twenty-five thousand.”

“It is.”

“Because the way things have been going, it could have been twenty-five hundred.”

“Or just plain twenty-five.”

“That’d be a stretch. So the whole package is thirty-five. It’s still a hard way to get rich. What’s she got against Evelyn, anyway? It can’t be that she’s pissed she didn’t get to go to the airport.”

“Her husband’s been having an affair with Evelyn.”

“Oh. I thought it was Evelyn’s husband that was fooling around.”

“I thought so, too. I guess the Upper West Side ’s a hotbed of adultery.”

“And here I always figured it was all concerts and dairy restaurants. What are you going to do, Keller?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself.”

“I bet you have. A certain amount of damage control would seem to be indicated. I mean, two of them have seen your face.”

“I know.”

“And one of them followed you home. Which doesn’t mean you can keep her, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I hope not. I gather both of them are reasonably attractive.”

“So?”

“And they’re probably attracted to you. A dangerous man, a mysterious character-how can they resist you?”

“I don’t think they’re interested,” he said, “and I know I’m not.”

“How about the dog owner? The one who looks like a dominatrix.”

“I’m not interested in her, either.”

“Well, I’m relieved to hear it. You think you can find a way to make all of this go away?”

“I was ready to give back the money,” he said, “but we’re past that point. I’ll think of something, Dot.”

Just as Keller reached to knock on the door, it opened. Evelyn Augenblick, wearing a pants suit and a white blouse and a flowing bow tie, stood there beaming at him. “It’s you,” she said. “Thank God. Quick, so I can shut the door.”

She did so, and turned to him, and he saw something he had somehow failed to notice before. She had a gun in her hand, a short-barreled revolver.